FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70  
71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   >>   >|  
e some pretence of examining the luggage, they excused themselves with sweet smiles and apologetic eyes--it was a disagreeable duty! A short time brought us to the first village in the Valtelline, where the road bifurcates northward to Bormio and the Stelvio pass, southward to Sondrio and Lombardy. It is a little hamlet, known by the name of La Madonna di Tirano, having grown up round a pilgrimage church of great beauty, with tall Lombard bell-tower, pierced with many tiers of pilastered windows, ending in a whimsical spire, and dominating a fantastic cupola building of the earlier Renaissance. Taken altogether, this is a charming bit of architecture, picturesquely set beneath the granite snow-peaks of the Valtelline. The church, they say, was raised at Madonna's own command to stay the tide of heresy descending from the Engadine; and in the year 1620, the bronze statue of S. Michael, which still spreads wide its wings above the cupola, looked down upon the massacre of six hundred Protestants and foreigners, commanded by the patriot Jacopo Robustelli. From Madonna the road leads up the valley through a narrow avenue of poplar-trees to the town of Tirano. We were now in the district where Forzato is made, and every vineyard had a name and history. In Tirano we betook ourself to the house of an old acquaintance of the Buol family, Bernardo da Campo, or, as the Graubuendeners call him, Bernard Campbell. We found him at dinner with his son and grandchildren in a vast, dark, bare Italian chamber. It would be difficult to find a more typical old Scotchman of the Lowlands than he looked, with his clean close-shaven face, bright brown eyes, and snow-white hair escaping from a broad-brimmed hat. He might have sat to a painter for some Covenanter's portrait, except that there was nothing dour about him, or for an illustration to Burns's 'Cotter's Saturday Night.' The air of probity and canniness combined with a twinkle of dry humour was completely Scotch; and when he tapped his snuff-box, telling stories of old days, I could not refrain from asking him about his pedigree. It should be said that there is a considerable family of Campells or Campbells in the Graubuenden, who are fabled to deduce their stock from a Scotch Protestant of Zwingli's time; and this made it irresistible to imagine that in our friend Bernardo I had chanced upon a notable specimen of atavism. All he knew, however, was, that his first ancestor had been a
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70  
71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Tirano
 

Madonna

 

Scotch

 

church

 

family

 

Bernardo

 
looked
 

cupola

 

Valtelline

 
Lowlands

difficult

 

Scotchman

 

chanced

 

typical

 
escaping
 

friend

 

brimmed

 
notable
 

shaven

 

bright


chamber

 

Graubuendeners

 
acquaintance
 

ancestor

 

atavism

 

Bernard

 
Italian
 

grandchildren

 
Campbell
 
dinner

specimen

 

stories

 

telling

 

deduce

 

humour

 

completely

 

tapped

 

fabled

 

Campbells

 
Graubuenden

considerable
 

pedigree

 

refrain

 

twinkle

 
Covenanter
 

irresistible

 

Zwingli

 
portrait
 

painter

 

imagine